


London Air

by CynaraM



Category: Mary Russell - Laurie R. King
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, I can't believe I got the deadline time wrong, Yuletide 2016, such a n00b
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 17:20:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8901895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CynaraM/pseuds/CynaraM
Summary: Russell and Holmes look into a case of threatening newspaper messages.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jessikast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessikast/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this little thing. Happy Yuletide!

Holmes was sitting at the caff table when I opened the door. I lumbered over in my labourer’s boots. A large coat, well-lined with pockets, disguised my slight frame; sleeves on the short side suggested a greater length of arm than I possess, and my gloves might have warmed the banged-about and browned appendages of a workman, though they did not. Muddy dungarees shoved into the boots completed the picture. A scarf hid the angles of my jaw, and a hat my hair. Winter was by far the simplest time for me to pass unnoticed. 

A thick fug of wet wool, bacon, burned grease, and vinegar hit me as the heat of the room swept around me. I mumbled an order for tea at the counter. The place was crowded, and I needed no excuse for taking a chair at Holmes’ table. 

He looked more reputable. He wore the lightly frayed suit of a small businessman. His twice-repaired document case, with a fading stain on the leather touched up with shoe polish, was an old favourite from a bolt-hole. I could see the signs of fatigue on him, but he was in good spirits. He had adopted the stoop of a tall man who bends over a counter to speak to his shorter customers, but there was no sign of stiffness in his shoulders. 

I sipped my bitter tea. It was going to bring me out in a sweat, given my swaddlings of disguise, but I was thirsty. “He’s still in there?” 

“Yes. He entered at half-six. He was let in the side door by the owner.”

“Do you think this errand is related to the case?”

He stirred his untouched soup. “Not directly.” 

Yesterday, we had sat in the spacious drawing-room of a London residence. Despite the room’s size, it was crowded with photographs, paintings, objets d’art, and an elderly wolfhound that lurched about the room, endangering end tables. The Honourable Mrs. Elaine Talbot had enjoyed her eighty-five years: enjoyed them very much indeed, by some accounts. We sipped lemonade from paper-thin crystal.

“It’s been every morning this week.’ Her gnarled hand waved at the newspaper clippings spread out on the low table before her. “Each one, clearly a private reference to an episode from my past. Each one ending in a subtle threat upon my life.’ She paused and sipped her own lemonade. “I am distressed, Mr. Holmes and Miss Russell. Only an intimate might know such things, but who would use them so cruelly? And I have so few left alive.” Her rings glittered as she made a graceful gesture of incomprehension. 

“If I may ask without giving offence, Mrs. Talbot: who would benefit from your estate?”

“Several of the larger societies for the protection of animals. The friends I have are in no need of my money, and this rubbish,’ and here she indicated the precious contents of the room, “would mean little to any of them.” Holmes and I shared a glance; while it wasn’t impossible that some rogue within the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals might decide to free up funds for the cause by doing harm to an elderly donor, threatening newspaper items was too round-about a way of doing it. 

“Yet I am declining, Miss Russell, both generally and recently. My heart is not good. I am embarrassed to admit it, but I am feeling the strain of this nasty matter. I would be grateful if somehow you and Mr. Holmes were able to learn who is doing it and why.”

Her fear showed in the catch of her voice, and I shifted in my humid disguise, remembering it. I drew my attention back to the present. “What did you think of him?” It was the first glimpse we had caught of our quarry.

“The darkness and the distance hid details, but he’s about thirty-five, one hundred eighty pounds, five foot ten. Gentleman’s clothing. He’s had dancing lessons….”

“He’s coming out the side door. Quickly, Holmes.” And in a flurry of pound coins and mittens, we were out the door. 

I evaded two automobiles and three pedestrians dashing from the door of the caff to the entrance of the alley. The cold air was welcome on my face. We faced him in the narrow alley between the jeweller’s and the optician’s next door. Sleet spat down in fits and starts as the wind drifted it into the narrow space.

His eyes widened at the shadowed pair of figures that bore down upon him in the alley. His hand dropped betrayingly to his coat pocket. 

"P-please, I'll give you my money, just...."

"Just leave you the diamond ring?" Holmes’ voice cut through the air of the alley, keen and a little amused.

Our quarry was uncertain. "How did you... did that Frenchie shopkeeper set this up? Does he buy his rings back, after you’ve stolen them? Well, I'm not going to stand for it. I am a man of family, and if M. Guitard thinks he can push me around, I'll...."

I interrupted his sputtering. “You'll do what? Run anonymous threatening messages in the newspaper, Mr…?”

He was visibly aghast. His gloves dropped from his nerveless hands. His mouth hung open. He closed it. “Stafford.”

Holmes gave a genial smile. “I think you'll find M. Guitard is not so easily frightened as elderly, ill ladies. He has, after all, built up this business from nothing since Fleury was destroyed in the war. He wouldn’t be much frightened by such tricks, and less so if he knew who was behind them.”

I took up the theme. “An elderly lady, though. One living alone. One in poor health, whose family has died and with few living friends. Such a person might be vulnerable.”

“You are about to propose marriage, Mr. Stafford.”

“I… That’s not your business.”

“The society pages guess as much. Your presence at a jeweller’s suggests it. The legal papers in your coat pocket and the mud-stains on your trouser cuffs confirm it. Tell me, why are you making such a clumsy and fanciful attempt to kill her?”

“Holmes, there's something odd here.”

A short pause was the only evidence he gave of annoyance. It was rude to step on his largely rhetorical question - Holmes has always enjoyed a soupçon of the theatrical - but something about the irritating man before us was failing to tally with the narrative we had built.

I walked over to the man, who flinched a little, but I only bent to pick up the glove from the cobblestones. “Leather worn thin on the thumb, where he fidgets at it. He’s doing it now.” Stafford froze in mid-fidget, outraged and guilty. I paid no attention, but turned the cuff inside-out and held the lining up to the inadequate light. “Nervous perspiration. Stained, though the gloves are new.”

Holmes was intrigued by my interest. “A guilty man may be anxious.” But he joined me near Stafford, who was looking increasingly confused. “Look at this newspaper.” And he plucked it from the man’s pocket and handed it to me over.

“Holmes?”

“Oh, of course. Pardon me, Russell. I sometimes forget your acquaintance with London is not as extensive as mine. This fold is characteristic of the West End, but the hawkers in Bloomsbury buy their papers from a distribution point that stores them… well, suffice it to say, the paper was bought in a limited area. One near Miss Talbot’s flat. He bought this paper this morning and went to her building.”

“He did?”

“Russell.” And more in pain than rebuke, he pointed at a number scrawled in the corner, almost too small to see. Her street number. 

The corner of my mouth turned up. “There’s nothing wrong with your eyes, Holmes. But there’s recent, severe financial strain in his boot-toes and the turn-ups of his trousers, and everything else about him points to a man of steady habits.”

Holmes opened his mouth to ask a question, but Stafford had been waiting for us to be distracted. He made a forceful and clumsy attempt to push by me. It was simplicity itself to put a boot in his path; he went sprawling, and Holmes was on him in a moment. But as I braced for the tug of the escapee’s ankle on mine, my boot stuck on an uneven cobblestone, sending me crashing into the alley wall. My head connected smartly, and I heard my teeth knock together before I saw stars and heard Holmes’ sharp voice. “Russell.” 

Then there was blackness, and I awoke on the ground. I couldn’t have been out for more than a second. Our quarry was struggling to his hands and knees, and bewailing his bruises, but I could see the pale shape of Holmes’ face as he bent over me. He made no further exclamation, but I felt his fingers in my hair ascertaining the damage. They came away red, but his expression was unconcerned, so it couldn’t have been bad. I sat up - slowly - to watch the ensuing events.

“I’m fine. Watch he doesn’t wriggle away.”

Stafford was sitting on the cobbles against the wall, watching Holmes with wide eyes. Whatever had happened to him during my brief unconsciousness had taught him to keep an eye on the older man. I addressed him. “Mr. Stafford, if you had been paying the least bit of attention, you would have seen that I was in the process of clearing your name. Holmes,’ I fumbled an envelope out of my pocket. “I haven’t had a moment to look at this yet, but I suspect this might clear the situation up considerably.” And I handed him the envelope in which the newspaper had received one of the threatening missives. There was no return address, but I didn’t expect that to be an impediment.

Holmes took it impatiently and held it up to the faint light. His eyes searched the print, the paper. He pried up a corner of the sealed flap and picked something loose. “Oh, for heaven’s… . My apologies, Russell. Mr. Stafford, how long has Miss Talbot been blackmailing you?”

He started, and his voice had a quaver. “Around… around three months. She told me I would be ruined if she spread a story… a scurrilous story about my mother.”

“Have you any idea why she selected you?”

He rubbed his face. “I suspect I’m not the first. She said something about settling scores. That old bat has hoarded up every slight ever done to her, and she’s taking it out on her so-called friends’ descendants.”

“Well,’ said Holmes, pulling Stafford to his feet. “It seems I misjudged you, Mr. Stafford. Whatever your failings, you are not the cold-blooded author of a campaign of mental terror against a defenceless and elderly person. I wish your fiancee well.” And it was only my long association with Holmes that heard the hint of humour in that pleasantry.

The sleet had finally stopped. As we walked back to the bolt-hole I asked, “what makes you certain it was Miss Talbot and not some other person?”

Holmes raised his face to the street lamps and took in a deep breath of cold, wet London air. He sighed it out. “There were circumstantial factors. It was a woman’s hand, disguised. Penned by a person sixty years out of the schoolroom, judging by the loops on the capital ‘A’s. London postmark, written in strong light from a single source to the left, like the writing desk we saw in her parlour. But when I found this adhering to the gum of the sealed flap, Russell,’ and he handed me a single fibre, “you can tell me if I jumped to conclusions.”

One long, wiry grey hair wafted into my palm. Canine. I nodded. “Shall we call on her after we’ve changed? If you don’t mind, Holmes, I’ll let you do the talking.”

And side by side we walked through the pools of lamplight towards our destination.


End file.
